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Milky Way’s Warp Caused by Recent or Ongoing Encounter with Satellite Galaxy

The structure of our Milky Way Galaxy with its warped Galactic disk, where the majority of its hundreds of billions of stars reside. Data from ESA’s Gaia spacecraft recently proved that the disk’s warp is precessing, essentially moving around similarly to a wobbling spinning top. The speed of the warp’s rotation is so high that it must have been caused by a rather powerful event, astronomers believe, perhaps an ongoing collision with another, smaller, galaxy which sends ripples through the disk like a rock thrown into water. Image credit: Stefan Payne-Wardenaar / NASA / JPL-Caltech / ESA.
Mar 3, 2020 by News Staff

Data from ESA’s Gaia star-mapping satellite show that the warped disk of our Milky Way Galaxy precesses, or wobbles, similarly to the motion of a spinning top. The warp moves around the Galactic center faster than previously expected, completing one rotation in 600 to 700 million years. That’s however, still slower than the speed at which the stars in the disk orbit the Galactic center. The Sun, for example, completes one rotation in about 220...

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Hypacrosaurus stebingeri chondrocyte. Image credit: Bailleul et al, doi: 10.1093/nsr/nwz206.

Scientists Find Chemical Markers of DNA in Calcified Cartilage of Duck-Billed Dinosaur

Mar 3, 2020 by News Staff

In the 1980s, paleontologists found a dinosaur nesting ground with dozens of nestlings in northern Montana and identified them as Hypacrosaurus stebingeri,...

An artist’s impression of two white dwarfs in the process of merging; depending on the combined mass, the system may explode in a thermonuclear supernova, or coalesce into a single heavy white dwarf, as with WD J0551+4135. Image credit: Mark Garlick / University of Warwick.

Astronomers Spot Ultra-Massive White Dwarf with Unique Atmosphere

Mar 3, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers have discovered an ultra-massive white dwarf with a unique carbon-hydrogen mixed atmosphere. Named WD J055134.612+413531.09 (WD J0551+4135...

Abel et al present the result of an experiment to measure the electric dipole moment of the neutron at the Paul Scherrer Institute using Ramsey’s method of separated oscillating magnetic fields with ultracold neutrons. Image credit: Gerd Altmann.

Physicists Precisely Measure Electric Dipole Moment of Neutron

Mar 2, 2020 by News Staff

In a paper in the journal Physical Review Letters, an international team of physicists reports the most precise measurement ever made of the electric dipole...

A honeybee (Apis mellifera). Image credit: Vijaya Narasimha.

New Study Reveals Link between Bee and Human Brains

Mar 2, 2020 by Natali Anderson

A team of researchers from New Zealand and Germany has demonstrated that the honeybee brain generates oscillations which share characteristics of ‘alpha’...

Artist’s impression of a cloud of trapped antihydrogen atoms. Image credit: Chukman So.

CERN Physicists Measure Quantum Effects in Energy Structure of Antihydrogen

Feb 28, 2020 by News Staff

In 1947, American physicist Willis Lamb and his colleagues observed an incredibly small shift in the energy levels of the hydrogen atom as the atom’s...

Facivermis yunnanicus. Image credit: Franz Anthony.

Paleontologists Solve Mystery of Cambrian Worm-Like Creature

Feb 28, 2020 by News Staff

An enigmatic worm-like animal called Facivermis yunnanicus lost lower limbs for tube-dwelling lifestyle, according to new research published in the journal...

Light microscopic image of the piece of 15-20-million-year old Dominican amber; the specimen contains a fairy wasp and the left forelimb of an anole lizard; several flow structures can be recognized in the resin. Image credit: Barthel et al, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0228843.

Lizard Forefoot Found Preserved in Dominican Amber

Feb 28, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

The left forelimb of an anole lizard (genus Anolis) has been found perfectly preserved in a piece of Miocene-period amber from the Dominican Republic. Light...

Evidence for the biggest black hole eruption seen in the Universe comes from a combination of X-ray data from Chandra and XMM-Newton, and the Murchison Widefield Array and Giant Metrewave Telescope, as shown here. The eruption is generated by a black hole located in the central galaxy of the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster, which has blasted out jets and carved a large cavity in the surrounding hot gas. Image credit: NASA / CXC / NRL / S. Giacintucci et al / ESA / XMM-Newton / NCRA / TIFR / GMRT / 2MASS / UMass / IPAC-Caltech / NSF.

Universe’s Most Powerful Black Hole Eruption Spotted

Feb 28, 2020 by News Staff

Using data from ESA’s XMM-Newton and NASA’s Chandra X-ray space observatories, along with two ground-based radio telescopes in Australia and India,...

This artist’s impression shows planets K2-18b and c and their host star. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / M. Kornmesser.

Super-Earth Exoplanet K2-18b Could Have Right Conditions for Life

Feb 27, 2020 by News Staff

A team of astronomers from the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge, UK, has found K2-18b, a planet of almost nine Earth masses in orbit...

2020 CD3 is estimated to be only between one and six meters across. Image credit: Jonny Lindner.

Earth Has New, Temporary Moon: 2020 CD3

Feb 27, 2020 by The Conversation

The Minor Planet Centre has just announced that our planet has been orbited by a second moon for the past three years or so. Designated 2020 CD3, the object...

Physicists Probe Core of Strong Nuclear Interaction between Protons and Neutrons

Feb 27, 2020 by News Staff

The strong force is one of the four fundamental forces of nature, which also include gravity, electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force. The strong force...

This image, taken by the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph on the Gemini South telescope on Cerro Pachón in Chile, shows the planetary nebula CVMP 1. Image credit: Gemini Observatory / NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory / AURA.

Astronomers Snap Photo of Beautiful Planetary Nebula

Feb 27, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Gemini South telescope on the summit of Cerro Pachon in Chile have taken a picture of CVMP 1, a planetary nebula located some 6,500...

Biologists Discover Animal that Lacks Mitochondrial Genome, Doesn’t Need Oxygen to Live

Feb 26, 2020 by News Staff

An international team of biologists has discovered that a tiny parasite of salmon called Henneguya salminicola has no mitochondrial genome and thus has...

Orange-colored gum ducts (arrows) in the brown leaf tissue of Welwitschiophyllum brasiliense from the Crato Formation, Brazil. Image credit: Roberts et al, doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-60211-2.

110-Million-Year-Old Fossilized Plant Gum Found

Feb 26, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists in Brazil have found thin bands of fossil gum — the first occurrence in the fossil record — inside 110-million-year-old (Cretaceous...

Proterocladus antiquus. Image credit: Virginia Tech.

Paleontologists Find One-Billion-Year-Old Green Seaweed Fossils

Feb 25, 2020 by News Staff

Paleontologists have discovered the microscopic fossilized remains of green seaweed near Dalian in the Liaoning province of northern China. The microfossils...

NASA’s InSight Mission to Mars Releases Preliminary Results

Feb 25, 2020 by News Staff

More than a year after NASA’s Mars InSight lander touched down in ‘Homestead hollow,’ a sand-filled impact crater on the western side of a flat,...

An artist’s impression of an L dwarf star, a star with so little mass that it is only just above the boundary of actually being a star, caught in the act of emitting an enormous superflare of X-rays, as detected by ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray space observatory. Image credit: ESA.

XMM-Newton Detects X-ray Superflare from Ultracool Dwarf

Feb 25, 2020 by News Staff

Using data from the European Photon Imaging Camera (EPIC) onboard ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray observatory, astronomers have detected for the first time a...

Sima de los Huesos hominins lived in what is now Spain about 400,000 years ago. Image credit: © Kennis & Kennis / Madrid Scientific Films.

Ancestors of Neanderthals and Denisovans Interbred with ‘Superarchaic’ Hominin

Feb 21, 2020 by News Staff

A new study by researchers from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Utah shows that over 700,000 years ago, the ancestors of Neanderthals...

This transmission electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2, also known as 2019-nCoV, the virus that causes COVID-19, isolated from a patient in the U.S., emerging from the surface of cells cultured in the lab. Image credit: NIAID-RML.

Scientists Produce 3D Map of SARS-CoV-2’s Spike Protein

Feb 20, 2020 by News Staff

Researchers have made a breakthrough toward developing a vaccine for the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, also known as 2019-nCoV, by creating the first 3D atomic...

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